The present invention relates to a system and method for commoditizing “four-dimensional” air travel trajectories.
Presently, the consumption of navigable U.S. airspace, and its associated aviation infrastructure, are each governed by constraints other than free-market principles. Of the three major determinants of air throughput capacity, namely runway environment capacity, safe-separation airspace capacity, and seat and freight capacity, currently only seat and freight capacity is subject to the market forces of supply and demand. At this time, the supply of both runway environment capacity and safe-separation airspace capacity are fully dictated by federal aviation regulations, and are not to any substantial degree affected by market forces. As a result, the provision and throughput of air transportation services in the United States is currently less than optimal.
The U.S. government is presently making attempts to increase the capacity of air transportation control services (i.e. safe-separation airspace capacity) via development of the “Next Generation Air Transportation System” (hereinafter “NextGen”), which is expected to increase air transportation control capacity by a factor of 2 to 3 times. NextGen seeks to fabricate “slack” in the provision of air transportation control services through the advanced application of real-time, satellite-based telemetric data, using net-centric communication procedures. In effect, NextGen seeks to develop greater autonomy for air transportation vehicles to navigate U.S. airspace, which will remain under the control of the Federal Aviation Administration. NextGen is not expected to be fully operational until approximately 2025. NextGen, while theoretically increasing the supply of safe-separation airspace capacity, does nothing to account for the variable of market demand for the commodity of safe-separation airspace.
Various types of “pseudo” market-based methods for mitigating air transportation delays caused by limitations in the availability of units of runway environment capacity have previously been described, for example “congestion pricing” and runway “slot-auctioning.” However, none of the known methods have proposed full deregulation of all three of the major determinants of air transportation throughput capacity, and commoditization thereof.
From the foregoing, it is appreciated that a system and method is needed for optimally defining and commoditizing each of the air transportation throughput components.